


when we were young

by luminisms



Category: The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Can you tell i have daddy issues, Like really minor, Minor Swearing, Pre-Canon, five minute read, like seriously, no relationships only vibes, piper deserves the world, pre-hoo piper, rick paid her DUST, theres one swear word, this is so short what the fuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:21:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28406910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luminisms/pseuds/luminisms
Summary: pre-hoo piper, from five to fourteen.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	when we were young

**Author's Note:**

> so this is my first fic ! please excuse me some minor details might be off because i haven’t read hoo in a while bc...yeah and this is not beta’d bc i’m self conscious k bye
> 
> also i wrote two and three while listening to butterfly’s repose by zabawa and 10/10 recommend
> 
> OKAY ALSO this entire fic was written at one am and posted while sleep deprived on a road trip i am so sorry uh all of it is in lowercase

piper’s mom was never around. her dad said that she had left, had left him, had left her, had left them. piper grew up despising the mom that hadn’t wanted her. she spent the first years of her lifebasking in the attention of the dad that stayed. 

_ one.  _

when she was five, tristan mclean got his big break. some action movie, about superheroes and such. at the time, piper thought it was the coolest thing ever ! she told every single one of her friends at school, telling them to go watch the movie, that her dad was a star ! when piper was five, her dad took her to her first red carpet. she met movie stars and directors and french guys who apparently were big news in the industry, but turned out just to be men who were weird and mean and kind of looked like walruses. when she told her dad, he chuckled and ruffled her hair and told her that one day, she would outshine them all.

_ two.  _

when she was eight, piper asked her dad when he would be home. this wasn’t anything new, she would usually end all of their phone calls with the question, then “i love you”, “i miss you”, and once, when she was feeling brave, “why are you always gone?”. he answered that by telling her that he missed her, couldn’t wait to see her, and would definitely be home before her birthday. he wasn’t, and that hurt, but piper knew he had to be gone. his work is what paid for her to have all these nice things, and she really liked all these nice things. sometimes, though, she would think that no amount of pretty clothes or expensive toys could make up for how tristan seemed to have the time and energy for endless projects, photo shoots, and gigs. how he seemed so invested in everything but being her dad.

_ three.  _

when she was eleven, her dad missed christmas. again. she was learning to just not care anymore, to brush it off and smile and say it was fine. but it wasn’t, and she knew it, even if her dad didn’t. she was also learning that she had a particular affinity for...asking nicely for things. it was strange, how she could ask a complete stranger for anything, anything at all, and they would simply hand it to her. even people who didn’t know her, didn’t know her father, would drop anything in an instant to get her what she wanted. but, in the fashion of most eleven year olds, she decided to not dwell on it, that she had bigger problems. namely, school. recently, her father had decided that no daughter of the famous tristan mclean could go to a regular public school, and pulled her from her elementary. at the end of her fifth grade year, her dad hired a private live-in tutor who he said would be “just like your regular teacher !”. starting middle school, something her old friends had been so excited to do, was boring and monotonous, without the bustle of several classes, teachers, and grades to keep. she didn’t even really have to try anymore, slacking off and then “asking” for a’s, in the weird way that could get her anything. it was ironic, piper decided, how she simultaneously had everything, and nothing at all. 

_four_. 

when she was fourteen, her dad picked her up from the police station. again. this time, she had been almost home when the cashier who had so generously given her all of the cash in his till realized he didn’t remember doing so. he checked the cameras, and a couple hours later, here she was. her dad had pulled some strings, put down some more money, and left with her in tow. the way she just got things was strange, and unnatural, and piper hated it. she hated it because no one should be able to do that, and she hated it because it was the only way to get her dads attention. even though he had bought her some fancy phone, told her to text, said he was still her for her, he never replied. on the car ride home, he said how her “problem” was getting out of hand, and any more of this would land her in prison. he said he didn’t know what was wrong with her, why she was doing this. piper didn’t tell him. she simply stared out the window and tried to remember back to when she was just piper, and her dad was just tristan, and that was enough. she though about leaving, how her dad would probably say that she was at some boarding school. she thought about disappearing, about just being herself. about being loved. piper wished that, even through the arrests and the robberies and the confusion, her life wasn’t so damn monotonous.two weeks later, her dad missed her fifteenth birthday. he didn’t even call. 

when she was fifteen, piper mclean woke up on a school bus, sitting next to leo valdez and holding hands with jason grace, with a fake backstory and fake memories of good times in her head, and knew her life would never be the same. 


End file.
